A commercially available picture hanger, described in Schrager et al., U.S. Pat. No. 2,522,901, includes a fixedly mounted upper piece and a lower piece connected to the upper piece by a screw that fits into a nut carried below a shelf of the lower piece. The lower piece includes a hook for receiving a picture wire secured to the object to be hung, e.g., a picture. After the upper piece has been secured by nails to a wall or other vertical surface, the distance separating the upper and lower pieces can be varied by turning the screw so that the lower piece and is raised or lowered relative to the upper piece. Raising and/or lowering the lower piece enables the wire and the object to be accordingly raised and/or lowered. Such an arrangement is particularly advantageous in situations where it is desirable to align the straight upper edges of multiple objects mounted on the same vertical surface. Such a hanger is also advantageous when, for example, a person hanging an object wants to prevent any portion of the hanger from being seen by a person viewing the hanging object.
A problem with the prior art, commercially available two-piece picture hanger is that installers find it difficult to grip the small nut in a confined space under a shelf, while turning a screwdriver from above the nut and maintaining the screwdriver in place in a slot arrangement in the head of the screw. Another problem is that heavy pictures or other structures hung on the hook of the lower piece have a tendency to pull the shelf down. Once the shelf is pulled down, it is very difficult to reposition of the lower piece to provide the desired effect of maintaining the top edge of the object at a desired position on the wall. When the shelf is bent, access to the nut is considerably more difficult.
It is, accordingly, an object of the present invention to provide a new and improved picture hanger having upper and lower pieces that are connected to each other by a threaded shaft, for thereby enabling a hook on the lower piece to be moved up and down relative to the upper piece that has been fixed on a vertical surface.
An additional object of the present invention is to provide a new and improved two-piece picture hanger of the described type, wherein adjusting the height of the lower piece relative to the fixed upper piece is facilitated.
Yet another object of the present invention is to provide a new and improved two-piece picture hanger of the described type, wherein a shelf carrying a receptacle for a screw connecting the two pieces together is arranged to provide greater strength to the lower piece to substantially prevent bending of the shelf in response to a load being put on a hook on the lower piece.